"Be Cool," the sequel to "Get Shorty," is almost two hours of appealing nonsense, about competing gangs and factions warring to control the destiny of a promising young singer. It's instantly forgettable, but smooth fun most of the way, with John Travolta reprising his role as the impossibly cool Chili Palmer, a loan shark-turned-movie producer.

Based on the novel by Elmore Leonard, the sequel picks up Chili's story 10 years later. Chili is still unflappable, still has a killer stare, and still has a way of making ridiculously sensitive insights into people that fill them with awe at his perceptiveness. On a Los Angeles street, he witnesses the gangland-style murder of a record producer (James Woods) and soon gets the idea to get into the music business himself. "Be Cool" is Leonard's music industry satire, and like his satire of the picture business in "Get Shorty," it doesn't cut too deep, but it's amusing.

Things get moving when Chili goes into a nightclub and sees a talented young singer named Linda Moon performing as part of a trio. When he talks to her and finds out that she's tied by a long-term contract to a parasitical manager (Harvey Keitel), his witless assistant (Vince Vaughn) and a gay henchman (The Rock), Chili decides on the spot to manage the girl himself. In a story that carts on a host of flamboyant characters, all doing extreme things, Linda is an important role, the movie's fixed center around which everything swirls. Her talent is the one thing everyone can recognize and everyone can value -- including the audience, thanks to Christina Milian's fine singing and her aura of self-assurance. She seems like a star in the making.

"Be Cool" reunites the "Pulp Fiction" team of Travolta and Uma Thurman, who plays the owner of a floundering record label. They have a nice ease with each other, and it's good to see Thurman smiling again, after all that brutal combat in the "Kill Bill" movies. Just as "Pulp Fiction" referenced "Saturday Night Fever," by having Travolta return to the dance floor, the makers of "Be Cool" can't resist referencing "Pulp Fiction," by having Thurman and Travolta dance together again. But the scene just lies there, and it's unlikely that another movie will ever reference the dance in "Be Cool." Let's hope.

Yet it's a curious thing: F. Gary Gray has two seemingly can't-miss musical set-pieces in "Be Cool," and he blows both of them. In the case of the Thurman-Travolta dance, he has Travolta in black and Thurman in white, on a dark dance floor, so we can't see Travolta, who is really the one the audience wants to look at. Later, Chili gets his protege a duet with Steven Tyler at an Aerosmith concert. The duet is intended to be the occasion by which Linda's innate superstardom is revealed. But Tyler hogs the vocals, and when they sing together, the mix favors Tyler, not Milian. It's supposed to be her moment, but instead she's just standing there.

Gray has better luck getting the comedy over. The story is an appealing mess about the competing interests of Chili, the producer played by Keitel, a posse of gangsta rappers headed by a rival producer (Cedric the Entertainer) and, of course, the Russian mafia -- can't leave them out. The characters are colorful, if sometimes forced: The gay bodyguard, who dreams of becoming an actor, is a little too silly to be true, but The Rock finds some laughs there. The late Robert Pastorelli, who died shortly after filming, brings an uncompromised bitterness to his role as a hit man. He is so nasty and sour that he becomes quite funny.

Travolta's natural air of inner peace, goodwill and total mischief -- not the usual combination -- make him an ideal Chili. The role calls from him many of the things audiences like about Travolta. He might want to re- think the smoking, however, next time he has to play a cool guy. Travolta is now at the age where we don't look at Chili and think the smoking is cool. Rather, we worry a little about his health.